


among my stillness was a pounding heart

by fardareismai



Category: Leverage
Genre: Multi, OT3, ot3 fighting, relationship angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 00:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15674652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: My heart is not brave or big. It is not cruel either. It is not strong at all. I keep it within this iron cage for a reason. Breathe on it wrong and I will die… Just go now. I would rather let you see my face, than my heart.Leverage OT3 angst ficlet, 854 words





	among my stillness was a pounding heart

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I am doing a Leverage rewatch and the Ice Man job came up (as it does) and there was that moment when Hardison had alienated both Eliot and Parker so much that she got her ride home from Eliot rather than Hardison, and it got me thinking of the days when they’re together and Hardison (as he does) goes too far and drives the other two off. This is what I came to. I’m kinda sorry?

Alec knew.

 

He’d known they were annoyed with him- his ego had gotten them in trouble again- but it hadn’t been until he’d made a passing reference to ‘tonight’ and seen both of his lovers look away from him in that oddly-synchronized way that he’d realized just how angry they were.

 

Most evenings, they’d all go back to his.They’d eat dinner, then go to bed together the three of them.

 

Tonight, however, Alec could see that he’d be going home and Parker and Eliot would be going… somewhere else.

 

Together.

 

It wasn’t against the rules- their menage didn’t have those kinds of rules- and he wasn’t angry at anyone but himself for causing it.

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

Parker slid into the passenger side of Eliot’s Camaro without a word.

 

They didn’t do this often, Parker and Eliot.Alec was normally the pivot point and beating heart of their love affair- if that’s even what it could be called. 

 

Parker didn’t know, and Eliot never said.Alec did- he told them both he loved them almost constantly.Those words were easy on his tongue, and when he said them, they sounded natural.

 

She’d tried to say it before, into the mirror in the bathroom, but her tongue always got stuck somewhere, and the word ‘love’ never came out sounding the way it did when Alec said it.

 

Eliot never said a thing.He didn’t try to argue with Alec the way Parker had when he’d first said it, but neither had he ever said it back to either one of them.

 

Parker glanced over at him as he drove, window down, his elbow resting on the sill, hair whipping about in the breeze, eyes straight forward, never looking at her.She could read most people, at least well enough to predict them, but she’d never been able to see past the surface on Eliot.

 

Sometimes, after a really bad job, or on one of those nights when the three of them didn’t bother to sleep and just loved each other over and over again until the morning finally broke, Parker had thought she’d seen in him… something.But who was she to say what that something was?

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

Eliot unlocked the door of his apartment and stood back to allow Parker in before him.

 

It was pro-forma gesture, really.Parker could have unlocked it even easier than he could- he kept nothing in the apartment, so he didn’t even bother to augment the flimsy lock the landlord had installed before he’d ever moved in.

 

She moved easily in the space that was his- familiar enough with the place that she didn’t even bother to turn on a light.They didn’t do this often, but they had done it enough that they both knew the steps of the dance.

 

They wouldn’t speak- Hardison was the talker- but they wouldn’t go straight to the bedroom either.They would sit on the sofa not-talking, or possibly pour a drink and not talk, or possibly even turn on some music and listen and not say a word.Parker could talk for days, but not about things like this- when emotions were involved, she fell silent.

 

They’d do whatever it was they weren’t talking about for awhile until suddenly, they would know.Eliot had tried to quantify it, once, but couldn’t.It wasn’t anything specific, just a sudden click in the imagination, and they would be on each other.

 

They’d fuck each other- hard, fast, sharp-edged, and a little mean.They weren’t that way when they were with Hardison.He was a softer soul than they were, and a gentler one.

 

It was why they needed him, really.If it were just Eliot and Parker, their affair might have tipped over into cruelty.

 

Not that it had ever been Eliot and Parker, really.He thought that perhaps they were too similar and too self-loathing for that, both of them.Neither of them were happy when Hardison’s ego drove them away from him and toward each other, and the reconciliations were always finer than the nights without him ever could be.

 

After they’d fucked each other senseless, they would roll away from each other, not touching, not speaking, not looking at one-another.Parker, who could sleep almost anywhere, would inevitably fall asleep first, and that’s when it would happen- she’d roll toward him in her sleep, settling against him, head on his shoulder, arm around his waist, leg thrown over his.

 

Only when she slept was she able to ask for the comfort that Hardison gave her so easily, and only when she slept and her walls were down was Eliot able to give it to her without fear of being slashed by her prickles.

 

Parker kept them going- she was the energy and the powerful mind that kept them doing what Nathan had set them out to do.

 

Eliot kept them safe- he was the strong right arm and the wall between their team and anything that might want to hurt them.

 

Hardison though, Hardison kept them together, and they would never have made it without him.


End file.
